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~~A MEMORIAL, POEM 







BY 

J. HOWARD FLOWER 



0OWTARIAN ;QrESS 
HARTLAND, VERMONT 






/ 

OCT 20 1915 ''' 
©C1,A413511 



May 7, 1915 



'^F^n^^ HAT news is this 1 — that Greed and 
\^ 1 Hate, 

^^^^ Twin tyrants of the bond and base, 
Have caused their War to culminate 

In one last crowning foul disgrace ; 
And blindly slain a gifted great 

Sweet Benefactor of the Race? 

What! Genius on the Almighty's Sea, 
From ^which a solemn spirit calls, 

**Man, hold me as God made me, free I" — 
Genius, for ivhoni it swells and falls : — 

A target for brutality 

For maddened fools and criminals ? 

To me that blow is personal, 

As to all spirits that respect 
Free thought and taste, his natural 

Career had courage to reflect; 
With us, the ones he loved to call 

The "Cognoscenti", the "Elect", 

The pity that the public for 

The general loss will register. 
And loathing for the beast of war — 

The hideous German murderer — 
Are focust in our anger o'er 

The impious blow to him — to her. 



Ah ! he \vhose literary crown 

Was Little Journeys o'er the miles 

To European vale and to'wn — 

Whose pages treasured tears and smiles 

Of British bard and sage — went down 
With face turned toward the British Isles 1 

The Titan face and frame that met 

Repellent, if poetic grave : 
The vivid face long locks beset, 

And classic strong distinction gave : 
The once light-clinging hair : are ^svet 

And sodden with the Channel wave I 

HND mortal life, whose feeble grip 
Holds far too few^ of such as he, 
Lets one more cherisht project slip : 
My w^ish to meet him once and be 
In personal acquaintanceship 
With him and his Community. 

Across the landscape lit ^with sun 

I look today and realize 
There is a subtle Something gone: 

A distant Presence that my eyes 
Ne'er saw, and yet for years w^as one 

With my best aims and destinies. 

My Youth-Ideal, which hath been 

A brilliant non-conformity ; 
And this its neutral setting-scene, 

Earth's dun and dull society: 
Both poorer by one pregnant keen 

Romantic Personality. 

2 



Like Morris, Alcott, and Thoreau, 
And lately, Lloyd, he kindled us 

To build Utopias here below^, 
Filled -with a fe^v adventurous 

Fit youthful spirits, all aglow 

With Love and Art, and rapturous. 

No marvel if our daring thought 

Made earth seem Heaven a moment, nor 

Our Beauty-Passion to have brought 
The Youth vain ages sought of yore — 

The elusive life eternal, caught 
And f ixt on earth forevermore ; 

Nor, that himself should half dispense 

With other immortality. 
Save this : to live an influence, 

A blessing, and a memory 
In godlike generations hence. 

An earthly Golden Age to be. 

( Such immortality as fate 

To consecrated Art ensures, 
Be his to earth's remotest date I 

For those peculiar miniatures. 
His quaint prose-pictures of the great 

Should last as Poetry endures. ) 

But now — this tragic day — the rest 
Is borne down in the panic-flight 

Of all the wings of Life, addrest, 

And bearing ne^ws of death like blight, 

To the country village to the west 
Christened from the rising Light. 



T^Vis hope of spire and tower : — how 
>*— ? His boulder-builded Faith is fled I 
The earth is not Parnassus now, 

But dull prosaic dust we tread; 
Before that mightier Absence bow ! 

— The Genius of the nlace is dead. 

'T^HAT beauteous Art of massive stone, 
^^ Carv^ed wood, quaint brass, and leath- 
ern book — 
No vari-colored vision kno^wn 

Below to equal that : but, look. 
When Time has thro^vn down stone from stone. 
By all save Memory forsook : 

When less than ashes are the leaves 
The Master-craft was prest upon : 

And dust, the heart of Man that heaves 
O' er much begun and little done : — 

Nay, the ver>- Mistress Earth he cleaves 
To now, hurled lifeless to the sun : 

Then what avail the soaring scheme 

Of building for posteritj^ ? 
These halls, these walls, how vain they seem — 

Shop, Chapel, and Phalansterie — 
If this ecstatic earthly dream 

Be all their immortality ! 

'T^vas but the counter-half of night : 
Brief day that made it seem ideal : 

The t^welve-houred transitory light 

That played around this rugged Real : 

We must look elsewhere for the bright 
Abiding Da^wn on poised Ideal. 

4 



Aye, true, we still must love and strive ; 

But not for earth, the Spirit saith, 
Whereon so many ^v^icked thrive 

And deal to Merit -wounds and death ; 
Where every lovely thing alive 

Is passing like a passing breath. 

Surely, from some yet unseen Star 
Today to every soul that feels 

The lifted spirit of the Fra, 

Despite our poor blind sense, appeals 

From airier heavenlier heights, by far, 
Than even his soul-stampt page reveals. 

So, forward, upward, all our powders I 
The souls of the departed Free 

Look down to count the remaining hours 
Ere we with him and them shall be 

Re-raising these transcendent towers 
In some eternal Colony ! 

^^^EANWHiLE, what best memorial ? 
jl 1 # Is it too much to hope to rear 
A lasting monument in all 

The social good he visioned here ; 
And a sane social Peace install 

Upon this friendly fertile sphere ? 

Where is our civilization's boast? 

Is the race curst or God grown blind, 
That we allow from coast to coast 

Men most degenerate of their kind 
To prowl upon the lives made most 

In the image of the God of Mind ? 



That we allow the vulture war 
To fatten on the carrion trade ? 

That vast domain, from shore to shore, 
It shames us that we have not made 

Fit for the Best to voyage o'er 

In peace and freedom, undismayed. 

We are a sovereign people ; — why 
Do w^e not lay our stern command 

On all who swell their profits by 
The devil's trade in contraband, 

That not another ship shall ply, 

With such a cargo, from our strand I 

Already, while this wrong hath stood, 
The Future writes our history : 

Our commerce, trafficking in blood. 
Imperishable infamy ; 

And our peace-sentiment, a flood 
Of muddy-white hypocrisy. 

« 

^^^kEN could not raise a nobler shaft 
" * ^ Of memory than disarmament: 
Dismantling all the murder-craft, 

That continent to continent 
Across his ocean grave might waft 

But argosies on blessing bent. 

Thus, when the fiend of slaughter hath 
His self-destroying rage outwore. 

May brotherhood and brains, not wrath 
Possess the w^ave profaned by w^ar. 

And sweep those monsters from the path 
Of tides that roam and Tv^inds that soar ! 



6 



er(Beax5 caBB^fix) 



^^ NOUGH ; our hearts must long be calm, 
^"j Tho calm with yet unanswered grief 
An5, haply, helpless, be the arm 

Of Honor in a world whose chief 
Is brutal trade or fierce alarm ; 

Where life is brief as Song is brief. 

Yet, hold to him who "is not here". 
We lately walkt with by the way, 

Who made so many meanings clear, 
But not the darkest could essay ; 

And let in hearts his hope held dear 
His Orphic utterance thrive for aye ! 

Bristol, New York 
May, 1915 




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